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TIL Winston Churchill was prescribed alcohol to get around American Prohibition

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v094 TIL that before filming LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson made the principal actors train for 6 weeks in sword fighting, riding and boating to allow the cast to bond. Later, most of the actors portraying the Fellowship got a tattoo with the Elvish symbol for the number 9.
epeBD TIL About Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming who became the first head of what is now known as the SIS in the UK. He had the habit of signing official documents with the letter 'C' in green ink a tradition which carried over to his successors and was the inspiration for James Bond's 'M'.
e0BdJ TIL That the 2011 Earthquake in Japan moved mass to Earth's center, causing every day since then to be 0.0000018 seconds shorter.
yVbLa TIL that Able Archer 83 was a war exercise conducted by NATO that panicked the Soviets into thinking they were really being attacked and so nearly launched a nuclear retaliation in response; it is now considered to be the nearest that mankind went into nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis
grOoL TIL Enya's music "Only Time" re-entered the Billboard Top 100 reaching number 43, thirteen years after the original release thanks to it being featured in Volvo's Epic Split commercial with Jean-Claude Van Damme